


Present

by powerandpathos



Series: 19 Days After-Shots [5]
Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Anal Plug, Barebacking, Come Swallowing, Light Bondage, M/M, Riding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 13:46:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9494114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: A PWP based on theChristmas artwork of Jian Yi. Both fic and artwork take place after Jian Yi returns (ie. from being kidnapped), when he repeats highschool and Zhengxi is in college.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to subtextual for beta'ing!

This artwork was [created by Old](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fm.weibo.cn%2F1862364383%2F4056648303896360&t=MWFhYTc1NjBlZjU1OGQwYmVkMGZlN2FiNTllNTY2OWU0ZGU1YTdiZCxVVENuVDYwZA%3D%3D&b=t%3AjJea3L-GQY6gTMS4LcZBVw&p=http%3A%2F%2Fthefearofthetruth.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F154932634009%2Fmerry-christmas-from-old%E5%85%88&m=1)[先](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fm.weibo.cn%2F1862364383%2F4056648303896360&t=MWFhYTc1NjBlZjU1OGQwYmVkMGZlN2FiNTllNTY2OWU0ZGU1YTdiZCxVVENuVDYwZA%3D%3D&b=t%3AjJea3L-GQY6gTMS4LcZBVw&p=http%3A%2F%2Fthefearofthetruth.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F154932634009%2Fmerry-christmas-from-old%E5%85%88&m=1). I do not own this artwork. 

* * *

 

The door opened, and Jian Yi started sobbing.

His wrists ached, the bell collar was tight around his throat and ringing out, keeping him too grounded—too present—every time he started to lose himself. And now Zhengxi had opened the door to his apartment, and shut it behind him, and he was staring at Jian Yi, propped on the floor, against the sofa, at the end of the hallway.

Jian Yi could hear himself crying, and he couldn’t stop.

The flash of alarm that had been on Zhengxi’s face when he entered was veiled by something else now. The motion of an almost-run had been arrested, and Zhengxi, slowly, swearing under his breath, was walking towards him.

He stopped barely a foot from Jian Yi, and crouched down, until their faces were even. Zhengxi’s fists were pressed tight against his thighs, clenching and unclenching, white-knuckled.

He said, ‘Did you do this to yourself?’

Jian Yi nodded, and cried harder. The words choked themselves out behind the gag, unintelligible. ‘ _He Tian helped and—I wanted—I couldn’t help—Please don’t hate me, I—_ ’

‘Shhh,’ Zhengxi whispered. Fingers trailed across Jian Yi’s jaw, wet with tears. He was shaking everywhere.

‘Fuck, Jian Yi,’ Zhengxi said. His breath was warm on Jian Yi’s face. His eyes were looking at him _everywhere._ There was something like wonder in them, fingers trailing the red harness across Jian Yi’s stomach, the ribbon binding his arms behind him. He nudged the bell at Jian Yi’s throat, and his eyes seemed to darken with the sound. Other than their breathing, and Jian Yi’s quiet crying, and small hiccups of startled breath, there was nothing but the bell.

Jian Yi had been imagining the sound of it as he sat there, an hour, two, sitting at the end of the hallway, against the arm of the sofa where He Tian had left him, waiting for Zhengxi to come back to the apartment. He would be the first thing Zhengxi would see.

Jian Yi heard the peal of it every time he shifted, legs growing numb—imagined Zhengxi pounding into him from behind, the bell some bright confirmation of every obscene meeting of flesh on flesh. He burned with the thought of it, flashing hot and cold, leaving him quaking.

Zhengxi stood. For a moment, Jian Yi thought he was going to leave. Was going to walk out the door and close it behind him, and it would come to its thunderous, resounding end there, the click of a lock, a bell ringing, and Jian Yi choking heavy tears behind the gag.

Zhengxi didn’t leave.

Jian Yi watched as he walked into the kitchen, and cracked open a bottle of water from the fridge. He turned, and leaned against the counter. His hand was shaking, water sloshing over the rim. His face was red. His eyes did not leave Jian Yi’s.

Jian Yi could hear the sound Zhengxi’s throat made as he swallowed, slowly, evenly, until the bottle was empty. He put it on the counter. The plastic crinkling was the only sound in the apartment, and Jian Yi could hear his heartbeat pulsing loud and hot in his ears. His shirt and blazer were damp with sweat; the bonds tying his arms were making him ache.

He had wanted to be good. He had wanted, for once, for Zhengxi to be pleased.

He was failing again. Was Zhengxi going to throw him out? Was he going to throw him out like this, and leave him struggling against the wall in the corridor, while his neighbours walked past, and saw the spit shining wet on his chin, sliding down his throat? How he strained against the bonds—how hard he was? In his high school uniform.

Zhengxi was watching him.

There was nothing Jian Yi could say. Nothing, here, that he could do. He could barely stand by himself with his arms like this, the harness tight around his waist. He Tian had put it around his chest, at first, eyes dark and glinting like lakes under dark skies, but Jian Yi couldn’t breathe like that, and his vision swam.

‘I guess if you want that, Zhengxi can put his hands around your throat,’ He Tian had said.

Jian Yi had the harness gag tied around the back of his head by then, and so all he could do was choke. Choke at the thought of Zhengxi’s long fingers pressing into his skin, nails scraping the pale column of his throat.

Zhengxi could leave bruises, if he wanted. Jian Yi would let him.

Jian Yi would let him do anything.

 _Please_ , he wanted to say now. _Please don’t just watch me._

Zhengxi looked at him, as he always had done, like he could see everything, and like there was something left hidden beneath the surface. But Jian Yi felt like he was baring himself. What was left, what secret part of him was he seeing, that Jian Yi was not showing? What part of himself did Jian Yi not know that Zhengxi did?

Zhengxi started moving. He stood where he had, before. He knelt, as he had done, before.

He could have left, if he wanted. He could have taken one look at Jian Yi and walked out. Instead he was here, trailing the skin revealed between the opening of Jian Yi’s trousers, the flesh where his shirt rose up, pimpled and shivery with Zhengxi’s touch.

‘Look at you,’ Zhengxi murmured, awed. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. His skin was so flushed. ‘Look at what you’ve done to yourself.’

Jian Yi felt like, any minute, he was going to break. Zhengxi, in front of him, was not like he thought it would be. He was waiting for the revulsion, for the abject horror—for the disappointment.

A joke—that’s what he could have said. Just a joke. But Zhengxi saw everything too clearly; saw everything for what it was. He would have seen the fierce stain of red across Jian Yi’s skin, high on his cheekbones. His eyes flooded with tears—anticipation and fear and nervousness; would have seen the way he didn’t tug against the bindings, and every shiver made the bell ring out around his neck.

 _I’m sorry,_ Jian Yi wanted to say. _I’m sorry I want this_.

He couldn’t say anything, words gone from him, tongue moving around the gag. A thin trail of spit was running down his chin, seeping from the sides of his mouth, split wide. His eyes stung.

Zhengxi’s eyes were unreadable. His face said nothing. He put a hand on Jian Yi’s cheek, brushing away the strands of hair sticking to his face, slick with sweat and tears. He ran his thumb over the arch of a cheekbone, and lower, across Jian Yi’s lips, stretched out and split around the harness. He Tian had cupped his cheek and rolled chap stick across lips that tingled and smelled of mint.

‘So your lips don’t crack and you don’t bleed,’ He Tian had said, darkly.

If Jian Yi had asked, He Tian would have said yes. He would have indulged in every part of this, every part that Jian Yi wanted and had never said aloud, and he would not have questioned it. He would have made it rough, pain-laced, if Jian Yi had wanted. He would have kept him so close to the edge, again and again, if Jian Yi had wanted.

And perhaps that _was_ what he wanted, but the problem was fundamental: He Tian was not Zhengxi, and, perhaps more probably, Jian Yi was not Mo Guan Shan.

‘How long?’ Zhengxi was saying. He had a hand resting on Jian Yi’s thigh, legs outstretched and splayed on the hard wooden floor. ‘How long have you wanted it like this, Jian Yi?’

He was asking questions that Jian Yi couldn’t answer with the gag stretching his mouth apart, and he realised that it didn’t matter: Zhengxi didn’t particularly care about an answer. His questions were whispered thoughts said aloud, trembling echoes in his mind that he could only form into words when Jian Yi couldn’t answer.

The power of the moment was already set into motion, and Zhengxi was playing with it willingly.

‘Was this it?’ Zhengxi said. His thumb was swiping across Jian Yi’s thigh, a steady, distracting motion that began near the inside of Jian Yi’s groin and swept outwards. It was a touch like a blood pulse, natural and mundane. Jian Yi was going mad with it. ‘Was this the last thing you could think of?’ Zhengxi removed his hand, and Jian Yi heard himself whine. His face flamed at the sound. ‘What if I still didn’t want to, Jian Yi?’ Zhengxi asked. ‘What if I just left you here like this?’

_Please, Zhengxi. Please don’t turn me away anymore._

Zhengxi leaned in, lips at Jian Yi’s ear. ‘You’re so hard, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Hard for me. How long have you been here, waiting for me? Wanting to come.’

Jian Yi sobbed, made an unintelligible sound. Those words on Zhengxi’s tongue, the deepness of his voice. It sounded impossibly wrong; it sounded unbearably right.

‘I’m not taking that gag off,’ he said. ‘But you’re going to nod, aren’t you, when you want to say yes.’

Jian Yi blinked at him through wet eyelashes. His breath was coming tortured and fast.

‘Jian Yi,’ said Zhengxi, and the calmness of his name made Jian Yi stare at him—made himself listen. ‘Are you going to nod when you want to say yes?’

Jian Yi stared. Did he—he didn’t know what he wanted him to do, he—

Zhengxi ground the heel of his palm against Jian Yi’s cock, and Jian Yi choked, bucking against the pressure, so hard it hurt. It hurt _so well._ He cried out, a high, needling, plaintive sound. The bell around his neck was ringing high and pealing, and Zhengxi had his fingers gripped tight around his shoulder, keeping him still. Keeping him in place.

‘Was that a yes?’

Jian Yi nodded, fast and hard, tears blurring his vision. _Yes. Yes, Zhengxi, yes._

He had wanted to be confident, and sordid, and some vision of a wet dream, but instead he was tear-stained and flushed and wanton, and he thought that was probably better. Zhengxi didn’t know what to do with the former, but the latter . . . The latter was begging for release, for a saviour. The latter was praying for a kind hand and a compassionate heart.

Zhengxi knew how to save him from anguish, and torment. He knew how to save him.

Better that Jian Yi was bound and tied and speechless, a lamb wrapped up for slaughter, and not the wolf that might scare Zhengxi away with a too-bright, too-eager smile, and eyes that promised more than they begged.

The pressure of Zhengxi’s hand was gone, but there was a wet stain on Jian Yi’s trousers in its place. He knew what it was. The way Zhengxi’s gaze lingered there, he did too.

‘You need this so much,’ Zhengxi murmured, in the same voice he had said, _Look at you._ Marvelled and wondrous like he was looking at a sky revealing constellations, newly-burst in the sky, just for him.

Jian Yi felt like that; he wanted Zhengxi to know that this was what it was like—tearing himself apart, just for him, a quiet explosion beneath his skin that was leaving him too hot and too bright, a burning glance across his retinas.

Reborn, and remade, Jian Yi was willing to burn for him, nebulous and incandescent, for ten billion years.

Zhengxi was just looking at him, like he didn’t know where to start. Like every part of Jian Yi was lit up and grappling for acknowledgment, like vying for his affection and that steady, calm gaze wasn’t what he was used to.

 _Here,_ his throat was saying, _mark me here with your mouth and leave the shape of you on me._

 _Here_ , his hipbones were saying, the backs of his knees, the soft flesh behind his ear, the cock straining hot and thick against the fabric of his underwear.

Zhengxi touched it, tentative, fingers dragging along the length, and Jian Yi shuddered. When he slipped his hand beneath Jian Yi’s waistband, Jian Yi’s head collided with the back of the sofa, dazed, and feeling impossible.

Zhengxi was touching him there, exploratory, fist stroking along the heat of him like it was different from his own, like Jian Yi was made of something new that begged to be touched.

‘So hot,’ Zhengxi murmured, and then he flushed, despite himself. His eyes lifted to meet Jian Yi’s, thumb circling the head of his cock, smearing pre-come across iron-hard flesh, a heated rod in his cool palm. His eyes were blue and unbearable.

Being looked at like that was like being touched like this, and together, Jian Yi could barely still the bucking of his hips into Zhengxi’s palm.

It was a look of cool intensity that Zhengxi gave to everything, considering, weighing everything up like it was some test he had to pass, and he looked at Jian Yi the same way, watching for the minute reactions, the inflections of his face. Jian Yi knew he was a mess to look at, tears and spit mingling and trailing off his chin, hair plastered to sweat-slicked skin that was flushed hot with want and fear and embarrassment and shuddering, helpless pleasure. And his eyes, closed more than they were open, rolling back in his head as Zhengxi tightened his fist around the base, tugged on the head, dragged his fingernails on the soft space of skin between his cock and his balls.

Pleasure was rolling off him in a wrecking, shuddering wave like electric aftershocks. He could make sounds that were no more than guttural groans, and the bell rang around his neck like every confirmation Zhengxi would need, that Jian Yi was saying nothing but _yes_ and _more_ and _touch me._

Zhengxi stroked him like he knew what he was used to for himself; he stroked him like he knew what Jian Yi was used to, and the idea that Jian Yi, one day, might put his hand around Zhengxi’s cock while Zhengxi touched his made his stomach coil with heat.

It was too much; this was too much. He was being given what he thought he would never get—Zhengxi was giving him this, and he had been verging, so closely, on giving up. Was that what Zhengxi had sensed? That closing desperation that, soon, would fall apart like a fragmenting vase finally shattered into pieces? Or had it been this: the gag, the straps that bound him, the inability to be anything but whatever Zhengxi made of him?

Zhengxi’s hand tightened.

Jian Yi made a sound, high and desperate, heels kicking at the ground as Zhengxi pressed in closer, face inches from his own, eyes unblinking, watching, waiting for the release.

‘Come on, Jian Yi,’ he said. ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it? You wanted this from me, didn’t you? Since you were fourteen?’

That was cruelty, taunting him for this, but Zhengxi wasn’t being cruel: he was asking him, seriously, testing him beside the heat of his words and the inescapable, unwavering intensity of his gaze.

Jian Yi made himself nod, even if it wasn’t true. He hadn’t wanted it from him; he had only wanted Zhengxi to give it to him, willingly, wantingly, and Jian Yi could feel it building him in like a wellspring ready to burst, a dam with broken banks.

‘Come for me, Jian Yi,’ Zhengxi murmured, feeling Jian Yi struggle beneath him, the human need for movement, hips bucking into Zhengxi’s hand. ‘Come over my hand. Let me get you off. You’ve been so good for me.’

Those last words dragged him through it, tore through him like a brick thrown through a glass window: the barrier too thin, the pressure of it too fast, too hard, too much, and nothing to stop it. He could feel Zhengxi’s quick pulls as he cried out, milking him to completion, Zhengxi’s eyes not once drifting from the look on his face that Jian Yi knew, distantly, would be vacant and gone, eyes rolled back, body trembling with the aftershocks of orgasm that Zhengxi had wrenched from him with a steady hand, certain as the tide.

Zhengxi released him, growing limp and spent, and Jian Yi saw the come coated on his hand through watery lashes.

‘Look at the mess you’ve made, Jian Yi,’ he said, bright and flushed, and still watching, like he was uncertain of the limits he could go to—how far he could push Jian Yi. Jian Yi wanted to tell him that Zhengxi could push him as far as he wanted; Jian Yi would go so willingly.

‘Clean me,’ said Zhengxi, and he pressed his hand close to Jian Yi’s face as his head lolled against the back of the sofa.

Jian Yi could have said no. He could have turned his face away, and denied him this, and Zhengxi wouldn’t have minded. The space between Zhengxi’s hand and Jian Yi’s face was tentative, and the command had been tentative too, listing into a question in the after-silence.

But Jian Yi pressed his mouth over the warm skin of Zhengxi’s hand, tongue reaching out past already-open lips, replacing pearl white fluid that tasted of bitter salt and something darker, with the glistening trail of his tongue. He swallowed, and indulged in the quiet shock he saw echoed in Zhengxi’s eyes. The slight hitch of his breath, the steady darkening of his pupils as they swallowed up the rest of his irises that weren’t already eclipsed.

‘Good boy,’ Zhengxi murmured, an after-thought.

Jian Yi could see the straining outline of Zhengxi’s cock in his trousers, and he was waiting for Zhengxi to reach beneath his clothing and stroke himself to completion, to spill messily across his hand and make Jian Yi clean him again. Maybe he would push him onto the floor and straddle his face and push his cock into Jian Yi’s open mouth and down his throat, a handle cradling his head, soft as a lover. Perhaps he would do nothing at all, now that Jian Yi was loose and pliant, pleasure given to him, as if that were all that mattered.

‘Do you want it to be like this?’ Zhengxi was asking him. His voice was trembling. He said the words like he had no authority over them, brimming helplessly into vocalised thought. ‘Do you want to be tied up and fucked?’

Jian Yi blinked dazedly at him. Zhengxi was rubbing his thumb across Jian Yi’s lower lip.

‘No? Do you want me to untie you? Take the gag off you?’

Jian Yi stared at him. He didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t care how it happened.

‘ _Inside_ ,’ he tried to say, but the word came out garbled and his throat was hoarse.

‘What was that?’

He couldn’t say it again. Instead, he felt himself tremble as he shifted his legs beneath him, kneeling, and then, with slow, shuffling movements, he turned himself around, and backed up until the soles of his feet hit Zhengxi’s knees.

He paused, and slowly, leaned forward.

His forehead touched the cool wooden floor, the scored wood dampening with the sheen of sweat on his skin, and pushed his knees apart, hands fisting where they were tied at his back with nervous, pulsing clenches.

There was silence.

He could hear his own rattled breath, and the thump of hot blood pulsing in his ears, making his body shudder with each throb that told him here was here, and alive, and present in this moment. Presenting.

 _Here,_ the movement said, screamed out at Zhengxi. _This is the only part of me that matters anymore. Please meet me here._

He heard a drawn-in breath, sharp and loud in the silence of the apartment—

—and then there were hands on him, and the room was tilting, and the floor was suddenly so far away, and the antlers were clattering to the ground. He could feel Zhengxi’s shoulder, hard and strong beneath his stomach as everything lurched, and he realised he was being carried, the room swaying beneath him, Zhengxi’s breath as harsh and loud as his footsteps—a door opening, the darkness of Zhengxi’s bedroom with the curtains drawn, and the door slamming closed.

 

* * *

 

Jian Yi was a mess.

Zhengxi could see that as he walked into the apartment and crouched in front of him. He could see it as he stood in the kitchen and tried not to come in his underwear and tried to be rational and understand _what_ he was seeing and what it meant and what he should do. He could see it as he closed the door to his bedroom behind him, and let Jian Yi bounce on his bed as he threw him onto it, not gently or kindly, shivering when the bell around Jian Yi’s neck rang out. Jian Yi made a small sound of surprise, and Zhengxi had to close his eyes at the sound, at the sight of Jian Yi, trussed up on Zhengxi’s sheets in his uniform, his cock already hard again; at his lips, ruinous at the best of times, split wide around the gag.

He was a mess, and Zhengxi wasn’t sure he’d ever seen something so perfect.

He’d wondered, first, if Jian Yi had taken something. Something that would bring him to this precipice, this edge that was so close to pushing him over. But then he’d realised, watching Jian Yi lick his own come off his hand, listening to him moan, wanton—watching Jian Yi bend over and lift his hips for him—that he had done this to Jian Yi himself. He had pushed Jian Yi to this point.

Zhengxi’s steady gazes, the drag of his lips between his teeth, the smell of come on his clothing when he’d closed a fist around himself at night, cried out with a name on his lips. Jian Yi had seen it all, been the subject of it all, and Zhengxi had pushed him away every time he came close enough for it to become more reality and less a fragile image in Zhengxi’s mind.

 _I’m not denying you,_ he’d wanted to tell Jian Yi. _I’m not pushing you away—I’m denying me._

But not anymore. Not with this. Not while Jian Yi had gifted himself so willingly to Zhengxi, wrapped up like a silk bow. A present, surely, that would be rude of him to deny. His mind stilted. Rude . . . Not that. _Painful_.

Jian Yi’s trembling as Zhengxi kneeled before him had said everything: that Jian Yi was hanging himself on that selfsame precipice while rockfall thundered dangerous and wrecking around him. That Zhengxi’s rejection, and denial, would push him from that edge.

This was it, the last Jian Yi could bear to offer him anymore. Begging, so frightfully honest and exposed and made manifest, that to shake his head at this offering would be more punishing than rockfall on the pale, fragile skin that stretched over more fragile bones.

So easily broken.

Zhengxi hung his head for a moment while Jian Yi struggled, confused, on the bed.

Perhaps, for once he should try to heal him, and put him back together.

But the fear lingered: what if, after this, it still wasn’t what Jian Yi wanted. Wasn’t what he had imagined it would be—wasn’t what he imagined Zhengxi could give him—since he had been fourteen. _Since you were fourteen._ He had waved that beneath Jian Yi’s nose, blood to a hound, and he had known, willingly, what he had been saying.

He stared at Jian Yi beneath dark lashes. Impulsive, beguiling, senseless Jian Yi. Jian Yi, who was writhing on Zhengxi’s bed, begging for release. Begging for Zhengxi.

He made a sound, muffled against the sheets, and it sounded like, _Please._

Zhengxi moved.

His hand rested lightly on Jian Yi’s waist, and Jian Yi’s stillness was instant and startling. His _willingness_ was startling. Zhengxi remembered when they were younger, and Jian Yi, too sick to undress himself after the fall into the river, had locked his legs around Zhengxi’s waist at his touch—an immediate reaction, startled into defence, to Zhengxi bowed over him, his hands brushing fever-warm skin.

Now, he was willing. Or perhaps it was an illusion. Perhaps the way he was trembling, minutely, beneath Zhengxi’s palm, was Jian Yi holding himself still with great effort.

Zhengxi let his hand slip beneath Jian Yi’s shirt for a moment, across the heated small of his back, only to where the notched red leather tightened around his stomach and stopped Zhengxi’s hand from drifting further.

He moved it southwards, and let his other hand join in the feel of him. His trousers were already undone—it took little effort to tug his briefs and trousers down his ass, over pale legs, lightly muscled and trembling, and over his ankles and feet. His socks followed, the clothing pooled at the foot of the bed, until he wore only his blazer and shirt. The bonds were tight enough that the clothes would have to be torn or cut off without loosening them, but Zhengxi couldn’t think about that.

Instead, he let his hands wander over Jian Yi’s lower back, over the swelling of flesh that rose beneath them, the backs of his thighs, dusted with fine, silvery hair, the dainty curve of his ankles that Zhengxi dragged his fingernails across.

Jian Yi was tall and fit and masculine, but there was something epicene about the slight shape of him, held in the fullness of his lips, the length of his hair and his lashes. The expanse of skin, like the unmarked territory of a newly printed map, smooth and pale and almost hairless. Zhengxi was coming to realise, newly, dawningly, that Jian Yi’s body was as distracting as his mind—as distracting as Jian Yi seemed, always, distracted.

But he was not flitting about now, Zhengxi straining to keep up with the wildness of his moods, the bright flash of his smiles like lightning that left Zhengxi breathless, the nonsensical phrases that slipped off his tongue that Zhengxi could listen to with fondness and yet never hope to understand.

This, he had lost for three years. Almost forever. It seemed like insanity to Zhengxi now that he could have denied it so long, and not relished in every curve and plane and shadowed dip of Jian Yi’s body—in every part of him.

Jian Yi was breathing quietly, body loosening beneath Zhengxi’s touch, the careful ministrations of his palms as they moved over him and settled him like snow shifting and quieting, packed and still and frozen white after an avalanche.

Zhengxi rested his hands on Jian Yi’s ass, and slowly, carefully, started to bring him apart.

He stilled, and stared.

Nestled there, rising barely an inch out from the small, pink furl at Jian Yi’s centre, was a black plug. It was innocuous, and still, and barely a few inches thick, but Zhengxi couldn’t look away. Every moan, every small shift Jian Yi had made, sitting on the floor in the hallway—had been because of this.

Zhengxi felt blood rise and mottle his face. His lips were close at Jian Yi’s ear as he rested a knee on the end of the bed and leaned over him. The mattress creaked beneath his weight.

‘Did He Tian put this in you too?’ he said lowly.

Jian Yi started thrashing before the question was even out, sobbing around the words he couldn’t say. His stillness was abandoned, head shaking hard back and forth, enough that Zhengxi could hear his teeth knocking together.

‘All right,’ Zhengxi said, hushing him, a hand smoothing across the back of his thigh, while the sound of the bell around Jian Yi’s neck echoed through the room. Zhengxi couldn’t stop touching him. There were suddenly no boundaries; nothing was off-limits, and Zhengxi was driving himself mad with the autonomy—that he could touch Jian Yi like this, and marvel at the softness of his skin that seemed endless.

‘How long have you had it in, Jian Yi?’ he said, soft, a lazy enquiry as Jian Yi settled again. ‘All day?’

There was a stuttered silence, and then Jian Yi slowly nodded. He had his face turned to the side. His face was a stained red—embarrassment, nervousness, excitement—and his lashes were wet and darkened with tears, grey irises shining beneath them. Zhengxi reached up to brush the wetness away from the sharp angle of his cheekbones, and then drew the same hand downwards, where the plug rested.

‘So you were ready for me?’ he said, nearly stammering on the words, flooded with the image of Jian Yi at school while this was inside of him. Sitting at a desk while Jian Yi thought about what he might have later.

Slowly, carefully, Zhengxi pressed his fingers around the plug, feeling the heat of it where it was snug inside of Jian Yi, and started to tug on the end of it. It was slow, and didn’t come easily, Jian Yi clenching tight around it.

‘Bear down,’ Zhengxi muttered, smoothing a hand down the side of his hips, waiting for Jian Yi to do as he asked. Eventually, the plug came loose, the tapered end sliding free, and Zhengxi tossed it to the side of the bed with a _thunk_ into the floorboards.

‘God,’ Zhengxi muttered, staring, spreading Jian Yi apart, watching his body gasp around nothingness, furling and unfurling around the emptiness, desperate to be filled.

He heard his name in the quiet groan slipping from Jian Yi’s throat, and watched as Jian Yi’s thighs fell apart slightly, welcoming him, opening for him, body sweet and needing.  

Zhengxi reached over and swiped a bottle of lube from the drawer of his side table, and Jian Yi shivered beneath him as Zhengxi straddled his thighs, running lube between his fingers to warm it before he pressed them against the still-trembling entrance of Jian Yi’s body.

Breath shuddered from Zhengxi as he pushed in. There was no intrusion, but he was dumbstruck with the tightness of it, with the heat. How was it that he had been wearing a plug, and already he was like this? Hot as a furnace-heated vice, clamping around Zhengxi’s fingers.

‘Is this—You’re okay?’ he said.

Jian Yi’s eyes were leaking, but heavy-lidded, as Zhengxi pushed his fingers further inside. He nodded, cheek pressed into the sheets, strands of hair sticking to the wetness around his mouth, and made a low, warm sound in his throat that turned high and keening and desperate when Zhengxi crooked his fingers. He was pressing back, suddenly, downwards on Zhengxi’s fingers, the only motion he could manage while Zhengxi’s weight had him pinned down and the rest of him was tied and immobile.

A third finger, and he was whining like a dog, high-pitched and wanton, and Zhengxi was breathing hard as Jian Yi bucked up beneath his touch, his cock grinding into the mattress with the friction, and Zhengxi was coming to see the signs: the stutter of his hips, the high, needling sounds of his breath caught barely in his throat.

Zhengxi pulled his fingers out, hot and coated in lube, and watched, pleased, as Jian Yi pressed back against nothingness, pale, sweat-slicked brow furrowed, a low question in his throat.

_Why did you stop?_

‘Because,’ Zhengxi murmured, stepping off the bed. He pulled his t-shirt over his head, and the rest of his clothes followed, joining the pile of Jian Yi’s. Except where Zhengxi wore nothing, wholly free, Jian Yi was still bound and warm in his shirt and blazer. The sight of him like that shouldn’t have made Zhengxi as hard as it did, but he could only watch with satisfaction as Jian Yi stared at him over his shoulder, eyes widening as they looked at his cock, hot and red against his stomach and leaking pre-come at the tip. Jian Yi’s hips pushed against the bed, and Zhengxi watched him press his thighs together.

‘I know,’ said Zhengxi, moving forward. ‘I know how much you want this.’

He climbed onto the bed, rolling Jian Yi onto his side so he was half-sitting where Jian Yi had been lying, sheets warm and damp beneath him, and then he was pushing Jian Yi up, helping him to his knees and bringing him forward, until his thighs trembled either side of Zhengxi’s hips.

‘I know how much you want it, but you have to work for it, Jian Yi,’ said Zhengxi. ‘You can’t just expect to be given and expect to take all the time.’

Jian Yi was flushing bright at his words, head bowed, nodding as he shifted himself forward slightly, the entrance Zhengxi had been working open hovering over Zhengxi’s cock. Jian Yi’s own was standing straight against his shirt, weeping and red where he’d had only the sheets to fuck himself against, but that wasn’t a pleasure Zhengxi wanted to allow him—not yet.

Jian Yi’s hands bound at his back, Zhengxi gripped the base of his own cock, holding himself still with one hand, the other a steadying weight on Jian Yi’s hip like a lodestar.

Their eyes met, and for a moment neither of them were moving. There was a total, sudden stillness. _Like this?_ they were asking one another. Like this, finally, like this. After the years of almosts and Zhengxi’s heavy-handed, nearly brutal rejections, Zhengxi was helping Jian Yi lower himself onto his cock, helping a part of Jian Yi open up and take him in the nearest, closest way possible.

They were trembling, both of them, with the possibility of it—the certainty of it—and Zhengxi was guiding him downwards, caught between watching himself slide inside of Jian Yi, and feeling it happen, hot and honest and so impossibly tight, and Zhengxi almost spilled himself there.

He was panting when Jian Yi finally stilled, their hips joined, Jian Yi’s head bowed low, chin on his chest. The bell chimed quietly with the tremors. Sweat had darkened the roots of his hair, and Zhengxi could feel him quivering above him—around him, tight and uncertain and tentative, fluttering like a heartbeat.

‘Okay?’ he said again, and again Jian Yi nodded, catching his breath.

They started slow, and Zhengxi wasn’t sure he could take much more if they went faster. Jian Yi’s thighs were trembling with the strain while he didn’t have the use of his hands, and Zhengxi had a palm against Jian Yi’s stomach, steadying him, another on the small, glancing dip of his waist.

Even above him, controlling this slow, steady roll as they joined, Zhengxi was distracted by Jian Yi’s slightness, tall and yet almost fragile in a way that he had never seemed before. But he was seeing, too, the furrow of Jian Yi’s brow in concentration, the flush across his bare collarbones as he breathed hard and uneven to keep rhythm, the uncertainty of it all as Jian Yi rode him, arms bound, wordless, restrained in a way he had never been.

Zhengxi felt dizzy with the knowledge, that Jian Yi had done this for him, silenced himself, held himself back, when Zhengxi wasn’t sure it was what he even wanted. His eyes fell on Jian Yi’s lips, full and stretched by the gag, and Zhengxi realised he hadn’t even kissed him.

Zhengxi felt like too-thin paper that would tear with a touch, a brittle leaf prepared to fracture beneath a footstep, too fragmented to be put back together again.

He needed him to lose himself. Jian Yi’s stoic friend, a pillar of amicability, of decency, of everything that wasn’t this sordid display of hedonism and need—he needed to become what Jian Yi knew he could be, but knew, innately, that he could not become what Jian Yi wanted if Jian Yi was not what he wanted.

Zhengxi lurched, and suddenly Jian Yi was on his back, and Zhengxi was fumbling with the strap at the back of Jian Yi’s head. The gag was thrown onto the floor where the plug still lay, tacky and drying, and then he was unbuckling the bonds at Jian Yi’s back, the strap around his waist, the blazer and the shirt almost torn from him to revealed flushed, sweat-slicked skin shuddering with the understanding of being bared. He took everything off but the bell.

Zhengxi sat back and stared at him, watching him loosen his arms, run his tongue around his teeth and flex his jaw, and then his eyes stilled on Zhengxi.

‘You stopped,’ Jian Yi said, hoarsely—and Zhengxi was suddenly lost in the way their mouths moved together, tongues slipping inside and searching, messy and wet and feral as Jian Yi’s hands bunched in Zhengxi’s hair and Zhengxi starting lifting him up again, feeling Jian Yi’s legs wrap around his waist, his cock enveloped in startling, choking heat as Jian Yi sank down and cried out into their mouths.

‘Like this,’ Zhengxi said, almost crying as they moved against each other, uninhibited and equal and grappling for pleasure. ‘Like this, Jian Yi,’ he said, lost to the way Jian Yi trembled in his arms, the way he clenched onto him like it had been all he had wanted to do from the beginning—hold on and let himself be rocked into the movement of Zhengxi sliding into him, pressing against the inside of him where he might scream, head tilted back to allow Zhengxi’s teeth to graze at the bare column of his throat, extended and offered, while Zhengxi listened to his name clear and broken on Jian Yi’s lips, over and over again, the collared bell singing with it. _Zhengxi. Xixi. Xi._  

‘This is all I’ve wanted,’ Jian Yi said, helplessly, face buried in the curve of Zhengxi’s neck as Zhengxi lowered them back to the sheets, Jian Yi’s back arching up to meet him as he pressed hard inside of him, bowed over him. ‘I just want this—I only ever wanted this, Zhengxi—I just wanted _this_ and _you_ and—’

‘Jian Yi,’ Zhengxi breathed, reaching blindly for Jian Yi’s cock, hot and tight between their stomachs, hand stripping across the length of him as Jian Yi’s mouth moved soundlessly around words. He pressed his forehead to Jian Yi’s sternum, hair on Jian Yi’s collarbones, and felt Jian Yi’s nails digging into the muscles flexing and contracting across his back.

He could feel it rising in him, rolling like the blackened mass of a storm cloud across a purpled sky, thick and charged and ready to ruin, and he felt it answered in Jian Yi’s own body, stuttering, shaking harder than he had before, Zhengxi’s name loud and tortured like it was the only thing keeping him grounded—the only thing that was _real_ as the storm rolled over them both, wrecking them, tearing them both apart with bright, booming light.

 

* * *

 

‘You could have done it differently,’ said Zhengxi, while they laid panting and spent in the sheets.

He could feel his heart slamming against his ribcage, an animal hurling itself against an enclosure, roaring for release, while the climax that had swarmed across him like rays through a cloud began to fade, leaving him warm and loose and _happy._

‘Not really,’ said Jian Yi, turning on his side. He’d taken the collar off and thrown it onto the floor with the rest of their things. The flush was fading from his skin, leaving him an entire stretch of pale limbs, exquisitely soft, a thigh thrown over the other, Zhengxi’s come seeping from him. Jian Yi didn’t seem to mind, and when he repositioned himself, head propped in his hand, he was smiling. It had a certain curve at the edges, a certain indulgence that was new, and almost shy. ‘I had to get your attention somehow. And if that didn’t do it . . .’

‘Idiot,’ Zhengxi muttered, running a hand through his hair. He looked back at Jian Yi, at his beguiling, easy smile that felt like looking at blue skies, cloudless and endless. ‘This wasn’t . . . I would have done it anyway. Without— _that_.’

‘Would you?’ said Jian Yi. The smile flickered at the edges. ‘Only took me three years to go missing and another few months for you to realise you’d almost lost me.’

‘Jian Yi—’

‘I was so scared.’ The words were spoken, and seemed small. ‘So scared that you’d run. Or—or do something like before. Push me away.’

‘I wouldn’t . . .’ Zhengxi stopped himself. Would he? ‘Not this time. This was different. You’d . . . I couldn’t push you away.’

‘So it was, like, a pity fuck?’

Zhengxi sat up straight. ‘What? No.’ He shook his head. ‘No, Jian Yi. I wanted it. I _want this._ But I’m saying that even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t kick you out and lock the door behind you. I saw—I know what that took. I know you did that and that it was _hard_ for you to do that.’

‘I _was_ very hard.’

Zhengxi ignored the joke, a poor attempt at humour that he could tell Jian Yi didn’t intend.

‘I meant,’ said Zhengxi, ‘that if I hadn’t—wanted it—I would have helped you. Untied you. We would have talked.’ He frowned. ‘It would have been . . . difficult, but we would have to.’

‘Well, at least we avoided _that_ awkwardness.’

Zhengxi paused. ‘We didn’t,’ he said, remembering Jian Yi drunk and mouthing at his neck, a knee between his thighs. Remembering Jian Yi fevered from the river and kissing him in the hallway in front of his sister. Remembering how he’d watched Jian Yi, after, trying to make sense of the hot stirring in his stomach when he looked at him and thought about him. The pain like a twisted knife wound in his gut when Jian Yi disappeared. ‘We had that already.’

‘Does it even matter now, Xixi?’ Jian Yi asked, as if he could hear everything flashing in Zhengxi’s head. He asked it seriously.

And Zhengxi said, ‘Not really.’

There was a sound, and Zhengxi realised it was Jian Yi laughing—small and honest, against the back of his hand.

‘You just fucked me, Zhan Zhengxi,’ he said, eyes wide and roaming the ceiling as he moved onto his back, limbs straight and still. He seemed to be seeing something that Zhengxi wasn’t.

Zhengxi rolled his eyes, and lay back down. ‘We just had sex, Jian Yi.’

Jian Yi made a small noise of contentment. ‘We just made love. I think.’

Zhengxi felt himself flush. Even after that, the way Jian Yi made it sound burned the tips of his ears, and when he looked at Jian Yi, he was blushing too.

‘Idiot,’ said Zhengxi.

‘Your idiot,’ said Jian Yi, moving again. He was swinging his legs astride Zhengxi’s hips, the same way they had been before, only this time Jian Yi’s mouth was wide and grinning, and his eyes held nothing of their clouded uncertainty. His hands were free to press where they wanted, his fingers nimble and light and oddly graceful as they trailed Zhengxi’s skin.

Zhengxi could feel his heartbeat pulsing again as Jian Yi settled himself down and gave an experimental nudge of his hips.

‘Jian Yi,’ Zhengxi groaned, flinging an arm across his face, but Jian Yi caught the wayward action, and pinned Zhengxi’s hands above his head.

‘You should have known what you were getting yourself into,’ said Jian Yi lightly, eyes glittering.

‘I think I knew that the moment I opened that door.’ Zhengxi shook his head. ‘Honestly, you looked . . .’

‘You liked it?’

Zhengxi considered the question. He saw the plug resting snug in Jian Yi’s ass; heard the peal of the bell around his throat with every thrust of his hips; saw the way those lips were stretched so obscenely and would have welcomed the head of Zhengxi’s cock if he’d pushed in.

‘I’ll take that as yes,’ said Jian Yi, voice warm and pleased and faintly amused, and Zhengxi realised why.

‘You’re not sore?’ Zhengxi said, breathing hard as Jian Yi took hold of his now-hardened cock, still a little tender, and lowered himself on it.

‘A bit,’ Jian Yi said, with an exhale as he sank down. ‘But I—don’t mind.’ He pushed the words out as Zhengxi’s head fell back against the pillows, as their hips were newly joined again. The pleasure was different this time: edged and careful as they moved, the both of them still ripe from their last coupling, skin newly made and reworked as they had remade themselves around each other, but the tinge of it made them move slowly, and carefully, entirely unhurried.

Zhengxi realised he liked it like this, but he could tell Jian Yi wanted it faster, intense in a way Zhengxi wasn’t sure he could manage right now. For now, he was content to lie there, and watch Jian Yi work himself on his cock—to let Jian Yi use him and take what he wanted.

‘I’ll fuck you properly later,’ he said, mapping his palms across Jian Yi’s trembling thighs.

‘I did—like being—on top,’ Jian Yi groaned, his hips rolling steadily. His arms reached down, hands falling on the tight muscles of Zhengxi’s abdomen. The whole of Jian Yi’s torso was stretched long as he leaned his head back, back arched, and focused on the undulating movement of his hips, steady as waves rocking on a breezy sea.

He was phenomenal, and Zhengxi could do little but lie there, and offer a token rise of his hips with each sinking motion Jian Yi’s, and watch.

‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘What about the rest of it? Did you like that or did you just . . .’

He watched Jian Yi trying to think—trying to make some sense of words in his head while he impaled himself on Zhengxi’s cock, chasing his pleasure with each new angle. A quiet groan pushed its way passed his lips, and he shook his head with the sound, like it would clear the haze of pleasure fogging his mind.

‘I—I liked it,’ he managed to say. ‘I like you—controlling me.’

Zhengxi swallowed a groan. He pressed his fingers tighter into the flesh of Jian Yi’s hips. Perhaps tomorrow there would be bruises, Jian Yi’s milk-white skin always marking like a peach under the lightest touch, but neither of them seemed to mind.

‘Controlling?’ Zhengxi said tightly. Jian Yi’s breath was coming tight and reedy, hips losing their rhythm as he chased a climax. ‘Like telling you when you can come?’

Jian Yi stilled, instantly, body stuttering as it fought against the rising waves inside of him. His nails stung into Zhengxi’s abdomen, biting in, seeking purchase—something that would steady him and hold him firm and sure.

‘ _Xixi_ ,’ he whined, breathy, hips rolling in the ghost of the movement he had aborted. He was clamping tight around Zhengxi’s cock, and Zhengxi tried to centre himself, to stop himself being dragged along with the white heat of Jian Yi’s insides, drawing him in, begging him closer like a whisper in his ear.

Zhengxi couldn’t bear it for long enough, and he shifted upwards, enjoying the gasp that slipped through Jian Yi’s parted lips.

‘Xixi, _no_ ,’ Jian Yi moaned, shuddering everywhere as Zhengxi took the warm weight of Jian Yi’s cock in his hands, a lazy, clinical stroke that allowed Jian Yi nothing. ‘It’ll come—I’m going to—It’s going to come out, Xixi—’

Zhengxi tightened his grip, thrusting upwards, watching Jian Yi bounce on his cock, eyes squeezed shut to try and hold himself back. Zhengxi wondered what it must feel like—that spearing heat inside of him. He wondered if one day he might try it, Jian Yi trembling and nervous as he pressed inside of him and—

‘ _Xixi, please, I can’t—_ ’

‘You wanted this, Jian Yi,’ he ground out, dizzy with the sound of his own voice and how Jian Yi faltered at it, pulsing tight as a vice around him. ‘You said you wanted the control.’

‘It’s not— _fair_ —I— _It’ll_ —’

Zhengxi’s grip was bruising and punishing. ‘Come, Jian Yi.’

Jian Yi came hot and quivering around him, shuddering heat that felt like Zhengxi was being drawn in, pulled in with no way out—nothing but tightness and rolling pleasure choking them both, Jian Yi’s weight collapsing on top of him as Jian Yi shook through it, wetness seeping across Zhengxi’s stomach—and Zhengxi went with it willingly.

**Author's Note:**

> [reblog on tumblr!](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/156510611559/present) or please leave kudos!


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